Universal Pictures spent Thanksgiving week securing the film rights to the thriller novel The Girl Before. After succeeding, the studio has set Ron Howard to direct.
The news was first reported by Deadline. Michael De Luca will produce with Howard and his Imagine Entertainment partners Brian Grazer and Erica Huggins. Tyler Mitchell of Imagine and Elisha Holmes of Michael De Luca Productions are the executive producers.
The Girl Before isn’t coming out until Fall 2016 and centers on a traumatized woman who falls in love with a house and the designer. However, she soon discovers that her story is starting to look similar to the story of a girl who died there three years before. The book is credited to J.P. Delaney, but that name is thought to be a pen name for Tony Strong, reports Variety.
It’s not clear when Howard wants to make The Girl Before. He’s currently working on Inferno, another film in the Da Vinci Code series, which opens on Oct. 14, 2016. He also has In The Heart of the Sea, which opens on Dec. 11 and stars Chris Hemsworth.
Howard was also in the news this week because he revealed on the HappySadConfused podcast that George Lucas did ask him to direct Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace. Entertainment Weekly notes that he also discussed why he has never wanted to direct a comic book movie. It’s simply because he’s never been into comic books.
“I like the movies when I see them for the most part, especially the origin stories. But I never felt I could be on the set at 3 o’clock in the morning, tired, with 10 important decisions to make, and that I intuitively on a gut level know what the story needs,” the Oscar winner explained on the podcast. “It’s a little bit different tone. … For me, I’d be copycatting, and not inventing. So I’ve just never said yes to one.”